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A Critical Pension Decision at Retirement

A husband’s pension strategy threatened his wife’s ability to keep their home if she survived him, adviser Susan Pool told the clients

By

Alex Coppola

Oct. 8, 2015 10:54 a.m. ET

Wrestling with a spate of health issues, the 58-year-old was hoping to retire within two years. But whether that was the best course of action financially remained a question.

“He was very set on that timeline,” says Susan Pool, a senior vice president of TrueNorth Inc. in Wichita, Kan., which manages $422 million for 273 clients. “The difficulty was that despite that target, it wasn’t actually the best course given the couple’s financial situation.”